The almanac

The moon is waning. Morning stars are Neptune, Mercury and Uranus. Evening stars are Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and Venus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include Scottish philosopher David Hume in 1711; English poet Robert Browning in 1812; German composer Johannes Brahms in 1833; Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1840; Western actor George "Gabby" Hayes in 1885; poet Archibald MacLeish and Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, both in 1892; actor Gary Cooper in 1901; Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid instant camera, in 1909; Argentine political figure Eva Peron in 1919; actor Darren McGavin in 1922; singer Teresa Brewer in 1931; Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Johnny Unitas in 1933; singers Johnny Maestro and Jimmy Ruffin both in 1939; television journalist Tim Russert in 1950; and filmmaker Amy Heckerling in 1954 (age 58).

On this date in history:

In 1718, city of New Orleans was founded.

In 1763, Ottawa Indian chief Pontiac led a major uprising against the British at Detroit.

In 1789, the first presidential inaugural ball, celebrating the inauguration of George Washington, was conducted in New York City.

In 1824, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was performed for the first time.

In 1915, a German U-boat sank the British liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland, killing nearly 1,200 people, including 124 Americans.

In 1945, U.S. Army Gen. Dwight Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany from Gen. Alfred Jodl.

In 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, shot down over the Soviet Union May 1, confessed he was on a spy mission for the CIA.

In 1987, U.S. Rep. Stewart McKinney, R-Conn., died at age 56, the first member of Congress identified as a victim of AIDS.

In 1995, Jacques Chirac, mayor of Paris and former French premier, was elected president of France on his third try.

In 1997, Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic was convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal in the first case of its kind to go to trial since just after World War II.

In 2000, Vladimir Putin was sworn in as Russia's second president in the first democratic transfer of executive power in the nation's 1,000-year history.

In 2004, Army Pfc. Lynndie England, the 21-year-old woman seen smiling next to naked Iraqi prisoners in widely circulated Abu Ghraib prison photographs, was charged by the military with assaulting Iraqi detainees and conspiring to mistreat them.

In 2005, Giacomo, a 50-to-1 shot, won the Kentucky Derby over Closing Argument, which went off at 71-1.

In 2007, officials reported no survivors in the crash of a Kenyan Airlines plane that went down in a Cameroon mangrove swamp with 114 aboard.

In 2008, Dmitri Medvedev was sworn in to succeed Vladimir Putin as president of Russia. Putin was named prime minister the next day.

Also in 2008, former Irish Finance Minister Brian Cowan was elected prime minister of Ireland.

And, Hezbollah mobs blocked roads and fired on government troops in Beirut to enforce a general strike and worsen a 17-month-old political crisis in Lebanon.

In 2009, government-issued stress tests on the nation's 19 largest banks indicated that the U.S. financial system needed to raise an additional $75 billion in extra capital by November.

In 2010, as the massive Gulf of Mexico oil leak, gushing an estimated 210,000 gallons -- roughly 5,000 barrels -- of crude into the gulf every day and pushing close to the Louisiana coast, officials sought new ways to seal off the ruptured pipe 5,000 feet below the surface.

In 2011, the U.S. government said five videos taken from the Pakistan hideout of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, killed a week earlier in a U.S. commando raid, showed him directly running al-Qaida operations and constitute the greatest intelligence bonanza collected from a top terrorist.

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